Introduction to AI and ML

Unit – I PROBLEM SOLVING

Part A
1. What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence refers to the simulation of human intelligence in

machines that are programmed to think, reason, and learn like humans. Rather
than being explicitly programmed for specific tasks, AI(Artificial Intelligence)
systems use algorithms and vast amounts of data to recognize patterns, make
decisions, and improve their performance over time

2. Differentiate Blind Search and Heuristic Search.

Parameters Blind search Heuristic search

It is also known Uninformed It is also known Informed
Known as Search Search
Using It doesn’t use knowledge for It uses knowledge for the
Knowledge the searching process. searching process.
It finds solution slow as It finds a solution more quickly.
Performance compared to an informed
search.
Completion It is always complete. It may or may not be complete.
Cost Factor Cost is high. Cost is low.
It consumes moderate time It consumes less time because
Time because of slow searching. of
quick searching.
No suggestion is given There is a direction given about
Direction regarding the solution in it. the solution.
It is lengthier while It is less lengthy while
Implementation implemented. implemented.
It is comparatively less It is more efficient as
efficient as incurred cost is efficiency takes into account
Efficiency more and the speed of cost and performance. The
finding incurred cost
the Breadth-First solution is less and speed of
is slow. finding solutions is quick.
Computational Comparatively higher Computational requirements
requirements computational requirements. are
lessened.
Size of search Solving a massive search task Having a wide scope in terms of
problems is challenging. handling large search problems.
Example Example
Examples of a) Breadth first search a) Best first search
Algorithms b) Uniform cost search b) Greedy search
c) Depth first Search c) A* search
d) Depth limited search d) AO* Search
e) Iterative deepening search e)Hill Climbing Algorithm
f) Bi – Directional Search
3. Define the terms goal formulation and problem formulation.

Goal formulation based on the current situation and the agent’s

performance measure is the first step in problem solving. The agent’s task is to
find out which sequence of actions will get to a goal state.
Problem formulation is the process of deciding what actions and states to
consider given a goal.
4. What are the different types of agent?

A human agent has eyes, ears, and other organs for sensors and hands, legs,
mouth, and other body parts for actuators.
A robotic agent might have cameras and infrared range finders for sensors
and various motors for actuators.
A software agent receives keystrokes, file contents, and network packets as
sensory inputs and acts on the environment by displaying on the screen, writing
files, and sending network packets.
Generic agent - A general structure of an agent who interacts with the
environment.

5. Define rational agent.

For each possible percept sequence, a rational agent should select an

action that is expected to maximize its performance measure, given the
evidence provided by the percept sequence and whatever built-in knowledge
the agent has. A rational agent should be autonomous.

6. List down the characteristics of intelligent agent.

Internal characteristics are
Learning/reasoning: an agent has the ability to learn from previous
experience and to successively adapt its own behaviour to the environment.
Reactivity: an agent must be capable of reacting appropriately to influences
or information from its environment.
Autonomy: an agent must have both control over its actions and internal
states. The degree of the agent’s autonomy can be specified. There may need
intervention from the user only for important decisions.
Goal-oriented: Agents has well-defined goals and gradually influence its
environment and so achieve its own goals.

External characteristics are

Communication: an agent often requires an interaction with its
environment to fulfil its tasks, such as human, other agents, and arbitrary
information sources.
Cooperation: cooperation of several agents permits faster and better
solutions for complex tasks that exceed the capabilities of a single agent.
Mobility: an agent may navigate within electronic communication networks.
 Character: like human, an agent may demonstrate an external behaviour with
many human characters as possible.

7. What are the various applications of AI?

 Robotic vehicles
 Speech recognition
 Autonomous planning and scheduling
 Game playing
 Spam fighting
 Logistics planning
 Robotics
 Machine Translation

8. Is AI a science, or is It engineering? Or neither or both? Explain.

AI is both science and engineering. Observing and experimenting,

which are at the core of any science, allows us to study artificial intelligence.
From what we learn by observation and experimentation, we are able to
engineer new systems that encompass what we learn and that may even be
capable of learning themselves.

9. Define the problem solving agent.

A Problem solving agent is a goal-based agent. It decides what to do by

finding sequence of actions that lead to desirable states. The agent can adopt a
goal and aim at satisfying it. Goal formulation is the first step in problem
solving.

10. What are the components of well-defined problems?

The four components to define a problem are,

1) Initial state – it is the state in which agent starts in.
2) A description of possible actions – it is the description of
possible actions which are available to the agent.
3) The goal test – it is the test that determines whether a given
state is goal (final) state.
4) A path cost function – it is the function that assigns a numeric cost
(value) to each path.
The problem-solving agent is expected to choose a cost function that reflects its own
performance measure.

11. Differentiate toy problems and real-world problems?

A toy problem is intended to illustrate various problem-solving methods. It can
be easily used by different researchers to compare the performance of algorithms. A
real-world problem is one whose solutions people actually care about.

12. How will you measure the problem-solving performance?

 We can evaluate an algorithm’s performance in four ways:
Completeness: Is the algorithm guaranteed to find a solution when there is one?
Optimality: Does the strategy find the optimal solution?
Time complexity: How long does it take to find a solution?
Space complexity: How much memory is needed to perform the search?

13. What is PEAS?

PEAS Framework is utilized to arrange comparative specialists together. The PEAS
framework conveys the performance measure concerning the environment, actuators,
and sensors of the respective agent. The vast majority of the greatest performing
specialists is Relational agent
 Performance Measure: The criteria that define the success of the agent’s
actions.
 Environment: The surroundings or the context in which the agent operates.
 Actuators: The mechanisms through which the agent interacts with the
environment.
 Sensors: The tools the agent uses to perceive its environment.

14. State on Which basis search algorithms are chosen.

Search algorithms are chosen depending on two components.

1) How is the state space – That is, state space is tree structured or
graph? Critical factor for state space is what is branching factor and depth
level of that tree or graph.
2) What is the performance of the search strategy? A complete,
optimal search strategy with better time and space requirement is critical
factor in performance of search strategy.

15. Evaluate performance of problem-solving method based on depth first search

algorithm?

DFS algorithm performance measurement is done with four ways –

1) Completeness – It is complete (guarantees solution)
2) Optimality – it is not optimal.
3) Time complexity – It’s time complexity is O (b).
4) Space complexity – its space complexity is O (b d+1).

16. List some of the uninformed search techniques.

The uninformed search strategies are those that do not take into
account the location of the goal. That is these algorithms ignore where
they are going until they find a goal and report success. The various
uninformed search strategies are
 Breadth-first search
 Uniform-cost search
 Depth-first search
 Depth-limited search
 Iterative deepening depth-first search
  Bidirectional search

17. What is the power of heuristic search?

Heuristic search uses problem specific knowledge while searching in

state space. This helps to improve average search performance. They use
evaluation functions which denote relative desirability (goodness) of a
expanding node set. This makes the search more efficient and faster. One
should go for heuristic search because it has power to solve large, hard
problems in affordable times.

18. What do you mean by local maxima with respect to search technique?

Local maximum is the peak that is higher than each of its neighbor
states, but lowers than the global maximum i.e. a local maximum is a tiny hill
on the surface whose peak is not as high as the main peak (which is a optimal
solution). Hill climbing fails to find optimum solution when it encounters local
maxima. Any small move, from here also makes things worse (temporarily). At
local maxima all the search procedure turns out to be wasted here. It is like a
dead end.

19. What is adversarial search?

Adversarial search in artificial intelligence is a problem-solving technique that
focuses on making decisions in competitive or adversarial scenarios. It is employed to
find optimal strategies when multiple agents, often referred to as players, have opposing
or conflicting objectives. Adversarial search is a technique used in artificial intelligence
(AI) to help agents make decisions when they are competing against other agents. It’s a
key concept in AI, especially in games like chess and tic-tac-toe.
Part – B
1. Enumerate Classical “Water jug Problem”. Describe the state space for this problem
and also give the solution.
2. How to define a problem as state space search? Discuss it with the help of an
example.
3. Discuss uninformed search methods with examples.
4. Give an example of a problem for which breadth first search would work better than
depth first search.
5. Explain the algorithm for steepest hill climbing?
6. Explain the A* search and give the proof of optimality of A*?
7. Explain AO* algorithm with a suitable example. State the limitations in the
algorithm?
8. Explain the nature of heuristics with an example. What is the effect of heuristics
accuracy?
9. Explain the various types of Agents.
10. Discuss about constraint satisfaction problem with a algorithm for solving a crypt
arithmetic Problem.
11. Explain alpha-beta pruning algorithm and the Minmax game playing algorithm with
example?
 12. Can you explain the concept of a search tree and how it is utilized in uninformed
search algorithms?
13. What are some current real-world applications of natural language processing (NLP)
in artificial intelligence?
14. What defines a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP), and how does it differ from
other problem-solving approaches in artificial intelligence?
15. What characterizes adversarial search in AI, and how does it differ from non-
adversarial search problems?
Part – C
1. Explain about the various AI Applications.
2. Explain the concept of local search algorithms and their application in solving
optimization problems for problem-solving agents.
3. Discuss the importance of heuristics in guiding problem-solving agents toward optimal
solutions, and how are they integrated into search algorithms?
4. Discuss the importance of heuristics in adversarial search and their impact on decision-
making in games.
5. In what situations might a CSP be preferable over other problem-solving paradigms,
such as search algorithms or optimization techniques?
6. Can you discuss the use of AI in predictive analytics for business intelligence and
decision-making?
7. Solve the given problem. Describe the operators involved in it.
Consider a water jug problem: You are given two jugs, a 4-gallon one and a 3-gallon one.
Neither have any measuring Markers on it. There is a pump that can be used to fill the
jug with water. How can you get exactly 2 gallons of water into the 4 gallon jug? Explicit
Assumptions: A jug can be filled from the pump, water can be poured out of a jug onto
the ground, water can be poured from one jug to another and that there are no other
measuring devices available.
8. What are the problems encountered during hill climbing and what are the ways available
to deal with these problems?
9. Define the following problems. What types of control strategy is used in the following
problem.
a. The Tower of Hanoi
b. Crypto-arithmetic
c. The Missionaries and cannibals problems
d. 8-puzzle problem
10. Are there real-world applications where uninformed search strategies may outperform
more complex, informed approaches, and why might this be the case?